ABSTRACT
The inspiration for this book came from our observation of the rising interest in Korea and Korean culture, which has resulted in a rise of people learning the Korean language (a feature profiling this development was shown on the BBC, 11 July 2018), and a corresponding rise in university departments teaching Korean literature. As has become apparent from events such as the 7th European Association for Korean Language Education (2018), it is interest in K-dramas in particular that has sparked this rise, mainly in Europe and North America but also around the world. We have also observed a rising interest in Korean literature, as can be seen in the several instances in recent years of translated Korean literature winning prestigious awards: Please Look After Mother by Shin Kyung-sook won the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011, and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian won the Man Booker International Award in 2016. While the interest is clearly there, it has been difficult linking students’ interests to what standard Korean Studies or Korean Literature courses have to offer. In addition, there is a significant lack of textbooks for teaching Korean literature, as most teachers have to develop their own class material from scratch, which tends to stay limited within a very narrow field. This textbook aims to fill this gap.
